Disney open-sources 3D code

The cause of open-source 3D rendering just got a shot in the arm from a somewhat surprising source - the Disney corporation.

As announced over on Monophyl.com - via Slashdot - the corporation's animation arm, Walt Disney Animation Studios, has released its Ptex 3D texture mapping code under a BSD open-source licence.

The move - which is thought to be the brainchild of the company's chief technology officer Greg Brandeau - was announced by developer Brent Burley last week, who stated that the open-source edition of Ptex is "the same production-proven code used at disney and included with Pixar's PRMan."

Promising "full support for reading, writing, caching, and filtering Ptex texture files," the project brings the same technology to the open-source community that was first used in Disney Pixar's short Glago's Guest before making its feature-length debut in 2008 kids' film Bolt - and pretty much all subsequent Disney Pixar animations.

According to Burley, the release of Ptex as a BSD-licensed open-source package isn't a one-off event: in a statement the developer claims that "[Walt Disney Animation Studios] expect to follow Ptex with other open source projects that we hope the community will find beneficial," with plans to launch a new page dedicated to its open-source projects on the official Disney Animation site..

Any 3D coders finding the thought of using Pixar technology in their next project exciting, or is Disney simply trying to get some free help with improving its software from the open source community? Share your thoughts over in the forums.